The inventor of the PedEgg is making it easier for people like you to market the next big 'As Seen on TV' hit
You've all seen it -- on TVs and in big-box stories across the country. The red "As Seen on TV" logo is as ubiquitous as its scores of consumer products.
AJ Khubani crafted the iconic logo in the 1980s when he kicked off his "As Seen on TV" business, TeleBrands. Today, TeleBrands products make up about 50 percent of "As Seen on TV" products, with about six other competitors filling the rest of the market.
Despite raking in $1 billion in retail revenue last year, AJ Khubani, who primarily helps to market entrepreneurs' and home inventors' products, swears he doesn't know "how to pick a product."
One of his biggest successes, the PedEgg, which he invented himself, was also one of his biggest surprises. In fact, the prototype sat on his desk for a year before he started to seriously consider taking it to market.
"If you think about it, it's such a simple product. It's essentially a cheese grater. Not the cheap ones you need to get Band-Aids for. High-quality cheese graters use etched stainless steel, which is a chemical process to make a blade really sharp and fine. So we used the same technology used on cheese graters and made a cheese grater for your feet," he said.
Despite hating the concept and never "being satisfied" with the computer mouse-like shape, Khubani concedes "it worked out."
After scores of hits in the last 30 years, including the PedEgg, Pocket Hose, the Hurricane Spin Mop and Amber Vision Glasses, Khubani is helping more home inventors and entrepreneurs find the same level of success.
RELATED: Check out famous "As Seen on TV" products marketed by TeleBrands and BulbHead
Enter BulbHead, a new e-commerce site for consumer products and rebranding strategy for the TV-centric TeleBrands company. Khubani is essentially using the e-commerce site as a testing ground for innovative new products. The site currently houses 1,000 products, the majority of which are purchased through mom-and-pop vendors. The top sellers on BulbHead will then be marketed on TV, and ultimately make it into every major retailer in the U.S. under the new BulbHead brand.
This helps Khubani, who "can't pick a product," choose what he and his team like -- and ultimately let the consumer decide what will be sold on a greater scale.
"It gives the inventor or small entrepreneur the oportunity to get their product not just on BulbHead, but the big picture -- it can get advertised on TV and then be in every brick-and-mortar retailer in the country pretty quickly. It gives them that opportunity to sell millions of units in stores, whereas just on the website, it would just be thousands," Khubani said.
It's a huge opportunity for anyone who wants to get in on the $1 billion -- and growing -- sales BulbHead saw in its first year alone in 2016.
Anyone with a manufactured product can approach BulbHead. If it fits with the BulbHead branding, Khubani's team will acquire some inventory and see if consumers react to it on BulbHead.com.
"We look for innovation," Khubani said. "There's so much innovation going on right now because of the internet, and there are so many entrepreneurs that are coming up and developing products and trying to market them -- but marketing the products is the toughest part. That's what we do."
